Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
BLOG
December 6, 2022
Preliminary hearings finally happened for Rachel and Jon. The prosecution argued that they were "co-conspirators" in the 2018 and 2019 rescues at Sonoma County factory farms. Judge Urioste agreed to send the case to trial on felony charges.
PRESS
December 5, 2022
The Press Democrat
Much of Monday’s testimony focused on whether Ziegler and Frohnmayer were present during the protests, which took place on private property, or whether they were directly involved in the thefts of birds from the farms.
PRESS
December 5, 2022
The Press Democrat
PRESS RELEASE
December 3, 2022
“Humans can consent to run and risk injury. The horses do not, and when they get injured and can’t run anymore, they are killed."
PRESS RELEASE
December 3, 2022
BLOG
November 30, 2022
Corporations seem more concerned with shielding the practices of their suppliers from the public than with the cruelty and disease documented in those farms. They know that the public would be horrified if they saw the truth. But what these corporations don’t understand is that repression often makes movements stronger. I’m not going to stop talking about what happens to animals, and I’m not going to stop documenting protests.
BLOG
November 24, 2022
Back in October, DxE's Lead Organizer Almira Tanner spoke at the inaugural AVA Summit. Check out her talk: Building a Mass Movement for Animals.
PRESS
November 24, 2022
KTVU
Direct Action Everywhere said that Thanksgiving celebrates the genocide of indigenous people with a tradition of violence that takes the lives of more than 40 million turkeys every year.
PRESS
November 24, 2022
KTVU
PRESS
November 22, 2022
Vox
“The pandemic shined a light on how broken so many aspects of our food system really are — from meatpacking plants that became Covid hot spots and caused tens of thousands of workers to get sick and hundreds to die to the inhumane killing of millions of animals as brittle supply chains broke down,” Booker said. “As public awareness has increased, so have the calls for transitioning to a more humane and sustainable system."
PRESS
November 20, 2022
The Gazette
As it stands, Iowa’s values are incongruent with the message of World Day for Farmed Animals, and as long as we continue to prioritize production over the well-being of animals, they will remain incongruent.
PRESS
November 20, 2022
The Gazette
PRESS RELEASE
November 17, 2022
The investigation at Foster Farms found an E. coli-infected turkey chick, buckets of dead chicks, and a litter beetle infestation. Said former U.S. prosecutor Bonnie Klapper, "[The arrest] is an absurd action on the part of the Berkeley police and one which serves only to protect corporations engaged in animal cruelty from being held accountable by consumers.”
PRESS RELEASE
November 17, 2022
TOP PRESS
October 10, 2024
Vox
In principle, there’s a lot of sense in capping the size of factory farms. Measure J’s proponents are betting that progressive Sonoma County, better known for its tasting rooms than its slaughterhouses, can push California — and the nation — in that direction.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.
TOP PRESS
August 30, 2024
San Francisco Chronicle
In dimly lit indoor aisles at Weber Family Farms in Petaluma, hundreds of thousands of white chickens live out their 90 weeks of life. They fly from perch to perch. They dust bathe in the bedding. They nip at water dispensers. They lay egg after egg. And they never leave. These barns are at the heart of a bitter fight that Mike Weber and Samantha Faye are waging for the future of local farming.
TOP PRESS
April 4, 2024
Los Angeles Times
Lewis Bernier, an animal rights activist supporting the initiative, said he has visited several factory farms across the country, documenting inhumane treatment, and one farm in Sonoma County stands out as having “the worst and most systemic animal cruelty that I’ve ever seen.”
TOP PRESS
March 15, 2024
The New Yorker
Instead of planning actions, many activists now spend their time litigating microaggressions and small disputes within their ranks... As a response, [DxE co-founder Wayne] Hsiung has tried to promote a maxim of "braver spaces, not safer spaces," which encourages the animal rights community to put aside their individual concerns, if possible, and do things like risk felony jail time for the cause.
TOP PRESS
January 30, 2024
The Guardian
If successful in Berkeley, a liberal San Francisco Bay Area town that’s often been at the forefront of US environmental policy, the method can be replicated elsewhere, [activists] say. “We can pave the path to abolishing factory farming,” said Cassie King, an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, one of the groups that pushed for the measure.
TOP PRESS
November 9, 2023
Vox
Hsiung’s trial and conviction show the extraordinary difficulty of trying to discuss what happens to animals on factory farms in a legal system that only sees them as property. At both factory farms in this case, DxE had documented gruesome conditions prior to their open rescue actions and had submitted animal cruelty complaints to authorities (though no action was taken by legal officials, King said). Yet it was the activists, not the farm owners, who were criminally charged and had to explain themselves to a jury.
TOP PRESS
November 8, 2023
Wired
For the first time, guerrilla animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere reveals a guide to its investigative tactics and toolkit, from spy cams to night vision and drones. Bernier says that DxE decided to publicly release its guide, even in the wake of Hsiung’s conviction, to help activists who are already committed to carrying out covert investigations do their work more safely and effectively.
TOP PRESS
November 4, 2023
The Intercept
Hsiung’s defense was in many ways stymied from the jump. The judge barred almost all photo and video evidence of animal cruelty from the trial, as has been the case in a number of previous DxE trials. As I’ve previously noted, the decision to disallow such evidence is usually made to benefit a defendant — not showing gruesome images of a murder victim, for example. Such logic has been flipped in DxE cases, including Hsiung’s most recent, to the benefit of powerful agribusiness.
BLOG
August 17, 2016
PRESS RELEASE
March 4, 2023
“The racing industry gives horses ridiculous names like “Big Laugh” because the suffering of these animals is just a game to them,” said DxE organizer Kitty Jones. “We give them respectful names because we see them as individuals worthy of respect.”
PRESS RELEASE
February 25, 2023
Referencing Chick-Fil-A’s history of oppression toward marginalized groups, activists say the company’s disregard for animals is part of a pattern.
PRESS RELEASE
February 15, 2023
Citing practices that cause prolonged, terrifying, and painful deaths at Foster Farms’ killing facility, activists call for corporate accountability.
PRESS RELEASE
January 26, 2023
More than 5,000 monkeys are confined at the center for use in research and breeding. Abusive methods cited by activists include the practice of withholding food and water until monkeys in research studies are so dehydrated they will perform tasks in order to be rewarded with minuscule amounts of food or water.
PRESS RELEASE
January 24, 2023
The footage shows pigs screaming, gasping, thrashing violently, and trying to escape as they descend into the pit of CO2 gas.
PRESS RELEASE
January 21, 2023
Saturday’s Bay Area demonstration was a nonviolent disruption of Sprouts Farmers Market, recreating DxE’s first-ever action but with a far larger assemblage than the seven activists who participated in 2013. As at the original action, activists delivered a slam poem describing how farm animals live and die while standing in the store’s “meat” section.
PRESS RELEASE
January 18, 2023
Investigator Raven Deerbrook recorded over 16 hours of footage from multiple angles, which shows pigs screaming, gasping, thrashing violently and trying to escape as they descend into the pit of CO2 gas. Former federal prosecutor Bonnie Klapper reviewed the video and determined that use of these devices on pigs violates federal law.
PRESS RELEASE
January 7, 2023
Activists installed images representing each horse who died in 2022 along the fence at I-80 and hung a 100-foot-long “Shut Down Golden Gate Fields” banner from the pedestrian bridge above I-80.
PRESS RELEASE
December 3, 2022
“Humans can consent to run and risk injury. The horses do not, and when they get injured and can’t run anymore, they are killed."
